Grater Plater: Does it work?

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Grater Plater got its first major promotion from the late, great pitchman Billy Mays. Though it's been around for a while, I decided to wait until the price dropped. It started at $10 plus shipping and handling, but now you can get them for around $6 or less.

For our test, volunteers Janice Moran and Sis Polin grated orange zest, nutmeg, ginger, and parmesan cheese. Sis used a handheld microplane and an old school nutmeg grater. Janice used the Grater Plater.

First the orange zest, using the microplane, the zest of the orange peel came off quickly and easily. With the Grater Plater, grating was cumbersome and slippery and in order to get any zest, Janice had to press so hard on the orange that the juice squeezed onto the plate.

The microplane grated the parmesan perfectly, leaving a generous pile of light, fluffy cheese. The Grater Plater performance with the cheese was noticeably better that with the orange, but Janice found it took much longer to get a decent amount of cheese compared to the microplane. And the cheese came out much grainier and fine.

Grating ginger using the microplane produced evenly crushed ginger, skin and all. The Grater Plater didn't do as well with the skin, but overall produced a nice amount of crushed ginger fairly quickly.

Finally, when it came to the nutmeg test, the Grater Plater grates nutmeg better than anything we tried. It easily produced fresh ground nutmeg comparable to the results Sis Polin got using the old fashioned nutmeg grater.

But for Janice, the overall impression was marginal at best.

"I wouldn't buy it. But if all I did was grate nutmeg. I might," she said.

Thumbs down for citrus zest. Thumbs up for nutmeg and ginger. Special consideration for the shredding nubs that won't cut your fingers. Some consumers say Grater Plater is handy for grating garlic then adding olive oil as a spread for garlic bread or bruschetta, but if you already have grating utensils that work well and know how to use them, you can probably pass.